the form to which contemporary performance aspires is the memorial

[Some words about tech in Soulographie for Carrie, who’s representing the conference at – a conference – where, C?]

We’re not using technology. Or, it isn’t an aim or subject. We’re pursuing community; the effort is to convert and extend some of the common practices of theater productions (single script, fixed rehearsal period, directed focus both architecturally and by all means of presentation) into an epistemological event – whereby we build new knowledge in spherical time, holistically, and socially. We are not linear, we’re ecological (criss-crossing time and space, promoting simultaneity – in architecture, performance and process). We mean to foment geographically and ideologically diverse reflection on genocide as policy and practice, using the case of America int he 20th century. Everything we implement is technology; digital technology in particular allows us to extend ourselves faster, farther than we could otherwise.

One of the 17 plays we’re producing is moving to an entirely digital presence: Shape, directed by Daniel Alexander Jones. All of us in the project are bound together, in part, electronically, and via a site/blog we’re expanding our circle by this means.

Guiding premises: that the form to which contemporary performance aspires is the memorial, that the memorial spiritualizes material culture (depends on facts/artifacts, relocating them and imbuing them with meaning), and that performance is a manifesto in favor of the spiritual artifact. In some ways, technology is a stumbling block – it remains (in some imaginations) immaterial and unspiritual (un-nuanced). Myself, I believe this is a phase we’ll pass through, and just as Teresa spritualized the architecture of a castle, and John of the Cross spirtualized the architecture of a mountain, we are in the middle of finding ways of mapping digital technology in contemplative terms.